Topps and Hank Aaron
 

I was surprised to recently find out that Topps used the same Hank Aaron image three years in a row! So that's 1954, 1955 and 1956. What the heck were they thinking? Did the company do this with any other baseball player or just Aaron?

They used the same image in '68 and '69 as well.

It was very common among all players.

Topps does that a lot.

Mays '65 & '68 come to mind.

Cheap is cheap.

Yes. Mays, Kaline and Ted Williams immediately come to mind, although Ted at least had an additional pose in 1954.

I think almost all the head shots are the same for the players in the 1955 and 56 sets.

The 1969 set is a veritable reuse-a-thon. The Mays, B-Robby and Banks cards immediately come to mind. Pics already used before, but just cropped differently for that year's offering.

63 64 Rose.

I had a woman offer to sell me the "original photo" that was used for the 1954-1956 Aaron cards. She told me it had been with her uncle since the mid-1950s and she suspected it might be valuable when she saw the same pic on an expensive Aaron RC.

I let her know the "STAPLES" watermarks on the photo paper suggested a more recent origin. [emoji1787]

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I have noticed this with 52 Topps cards as well. I am not 100% sure, obviously, but I'd say Topps used some of Bowman's earlier photos and maybe just tweaked them a bit for their breakthrough set in 52.

Speaking of reuse...

Attachment 349764Attachment 349765

Yick!!

That really sucks! Didn't kids and parents complain to Topps about it in the 1950s? I would have definitely complained about it!

Bubba Smith had like the same card for 5 years

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Speaking for myself, I was quite content in the 1950's just to have a couple of quarters to spend on frivolous stuff like baseball cards. When I was a kid, I had no idea it was even possible to complain to a company in NYC about anything, even if I wanted to.:)